Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 10===

Excited voices could be heard outside of the large semi-truck. Dinner was over and it was time for everyone to take a bath.

And at the same time…

“I knew Sodate-chan stole the ball,” said a voice out in the stadium parking lot where some hardened snow remained.

It belonged to Risako, a girl who wore the same gym clothes as the other children. She had slipped out of the truck at bath time and she was peeking underneath one of the trucks with her red hair done up like a piece of candy. She would have a harder time going out after her bath. She would feel too chilly for an adventure after warming up in the bath.

She had no real complaints with her life here, but she could not just ask for anything she wanted and have them buy it for her. When she got up to use the bathroom at night, she would sometimes see the man they called “mister” and the ghost lady whispering to each other. She could imagine they were talking about money. And since they did not want her and the other children to hear, they were probably struggling on that front. So they had to take care of the toys they did have.

Sodate, one of the boys she lived with, did not think about any of that and he had a habit of stealing things. That would be fine if he returned them later, but he would leave them hidden in some secret base he made and then forget where it was. Their trucks moved around a lot, so those things often ended up missing afterwards.

She was looking below one of the trucks because of her past experience with this.

Her intuition told her something here.

(Sodate-chan loves to hide prizes in his secret bases.)

An LED light came on. Instead of the cream color of a light bulb, the light that pierced the darkness was such a bright white that it hurt her eyes. They did not have enough money for all of the children to have phones, but mister made sure they each had a personal alarm. Those had a light on them. It was only a single small LED, but it was far better than nothing.

Sodate’s secret bases were always places the grownups could not go. But the ghost lady could pass through walls and ceilings, so a thick wall or locked door were not what mattered most. He instead relied on them thinking “surely no one would go there”. Only then could he gather the abandoned materials or cardboard boxes to make his secret base.

And Risako knew how to sniff out those places.

“Boys love making their bases underground.”

The trucks were situated high up, so a girl of her age did not even need to crawl. She only had to duck down to get underneath. The ghost lady would scold her fiercely if she was caught doing this, but that was why she had to do it. With only the light of her personal alarm that resembled an egg-shaped keychain, she continued on with a spirit of nothing ventured, nothing gained.

She found something: a round metal manhole cover.

She sat down next to it, near one of the large tires that looked like an onion ring stood up on its side.

“Hmm.”

There was a small gap open, but she could not pull it open just by sticking her fingers in there. It refused to budge, just like a barbell, so it may have required a special tool.

Now.

Normally, her attempt would have ended there. There was no way a girl in gym clothes could open the manhole and climb inside. She should have given up on the heavy cover and reluctantly returned to the others.

But…

“A tool,” she said like she had thought of something.

She reached her small hand into her gym clothes and pulled out something hard and round.

It glittered with a golden light.

“That’s right! I have my present from Santa!!”

''The lever was pulled.

''The track switched to a route that should not have been possible.

“Please, Coin of Nicholas, open that cover for me!!”

She heard a heavy metallic scraping as the barbell-heavy manhole cover slowly slid to the side like it was being tugged by fishing line tied around it. She jumped at the noise and aimed her light over, but she could not see what was moving the cover.

The hole now lay wide open before her.

She shined her bright LED light down and stared into it for a while.

“This must be the entrance to his secret base.”

In lieu of a ladder, horizontal steel bars were installed in the curved concrete wall at even intervals. They continued down and down, deeper and deeper. She hesitantly reached out and touched the top bar, grabbed it, and tugged, but it did not budge. It did not seem like it was so rusty it would break away as soon as she put her weight on it.

She was scared.

But…

“Ah!”

Something slipped from her hand: the very light she had been reliant on. The LED light fell into the manhole, bounced, and came to a stop. That appeared to be the bottom of the darkness.

Yes, this darkness had a bottom. It did not continue all the way down to hell.

She had found Sodate’s secret base, so she had to find the ball and chemical soap he had hidden. Before the trucks moved again.

Also…

Mister had scrounged together what little money they had to buy enough personal alarms for everyone, so she did not want to say she had lost hers. She had already used her Coin of Nicholas, so she could not make a wish on it to get the alarm.

Her only option was to gather what little courage she had in her small chest.

“This leads to where Sodate-chan hid the ball!”

Risako had never thought about why exactly the ghost lady got so angry when the children climbed under the trucks, but the answer was simple. If they failed to notice someone had climbed into the manhole, it could lead to a terrible disaster.